This unit was especially enjoyable for me. It deepened my understanding of complex characters and point of view; I understood the motives of Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie, and I found myself often thinking through their mind and empathizing with all three. I love stories where the author enables readers to empathize so well with characters and our work on Ethan From strengthened my ability to recognize and understand the complex characters of the novella. I learned to use diction, tone, symbolism, and details to understand their motives. I then learned to connect character motives to the greater themes in the novella and again connect those themes back to selection of detail and symbolism. I again focused on gender and historical lenses, and feel very confident in using the two lenses. I plan to work next semester on my skills in other critical lenses which I feel weak in. Despite the vivid imagery used in the book, my ability to analyze the use of imagery in story is still lacking. I intend to work on deepening my understanding of imagery next semester. My writing skills during this unit remained relatively static. Again, I need to improve my quote selection skills as I found this very difficult. I feel strong in my ability to develop a central idea and support the idea; the place where I have trouble is selecting the evidence to use. I plan to improve on this skill next semester. I feel very confident in my listening and discussion skills; our socratic seminar during this unit went very well with an intellectual and stimulating conversation. I was able to bring original ideas to the table, build on and inquire about other's ideas, and the improve the collective understanding of the novella through insightful comments. I came to the table very well prepared with notes and questions which enabled me to build on analyses and ideas. Lastly, this unit was my first attempted at properly annotating a book with notes to effectively use in a timed setting; I failed. My notes were almost completely useless for the unit test. I took too many useless annotations and did not organize them properly. Next semester, I plan to work on noting ideas rather than simply highlighting or marking. I also will work on organizing notes by theme and character in the front of books, as Mrs. Walls suggested.
Loading...